Stepping Out Of the Shadows and Creating a History for Women

Until recently, women poets in Ireland have gotten little recognition, with poetry being dominated for many years by a longstanding male tradition. In a recent interview, Eavan Boland expressed this dilemma, saying, "A young woman in one of my workshops told me if I called myself a poet, people would think I didn't wash my windows" (Hannan 10). For many years it was hard to break through the invisible barrier, one that prevented women poets from …

…Studies 28 (1993): 100-115. Hannan, Dennis J. and Nancy Means Wright. "Q. and A. with Eavan Boland." Irish Literary Supplement 10.1 (1991): 10-11. Haberstroh, Patricia Boyle. Women Creating Women. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996. Keen, Paul. "The Doubled Edge: Identity and Alterity in the Poetry of Eavan Boland and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill." Mosaic 33.3 (2000): 19-34. Klauke, Amy. "Toward Her Own Image." Northwest Review 25.1 (1987): 73-80. Boland, Eavan. "The Woman Poet in a National Tradition." Studies Studies. August 1987 pgs 148-58